Gender Diversity in Jewish Text

And these are the signs of an aylonit: if she doesn't have breasts, and/or has difficulty during intercourse. Her lower abdomen isn't like a woman's. Her voice is rough and she can't be identified as male or female. ...

13. And these are the signs of a saris: He doesn't have a beard. His hair is weak. His flesh is smooth/hairless. His urine doesn't make foam. And when he urinates, it doesn't form an arch. And his semen is thin. And is urine doesn't ferment. And he washes in the rainy season without his flesh producing steam. And his voice is week and he can't be identified as male or female.

14. And such a saris is everywhere called a s'ris-hamah ("sun-saris"). But a male whose member or testicles were cut off or removed or crushed, as the idolaters do, is called a s'ris-adam (man[-made] saris). ...

One who has a male organ and a female organ is called an androgynus and there is uncertainty if they are male or female. And there is no sign that would ever determine that they were definitely male or female.

And whoever has neither maleness nor femaleness, but is closed up is called a tumtum and they are also of an uncertain category. But if a tumtum is opened [by surgery or an accident] and a male organ is found, they are a definite male. And if a female organ is found, they are a female.

The androgynus is in some ways like men, and in other ways like women. In other ways he is like men and women, and in others he is like neither men nor women.

How are they similar to men?...They dress (and cut their hair) like a man; marry others and are not married off, like a man; and are obliged to perform all the commandments in the Torah, like a man.

How are they similar to women? They cause impurity with red discharge like women; and they must not be secluded with men, like women; and he does not share [in the inheritance] with the sons, like women; and he cannot eat most holy sacrifices, like women. At his birth his mother counts the blood of her impurity like [they do when they give birth to a] girl; and he is disqualified from being a witness, like women...

And in what are they different from both men and women? ... They must not be sold as a Hebrew slave, unlike men or women. They cannot be assigned a value [for purposes of fulfilling a vow for the value of persons], unlike men or women. .... Rabbi Meir [other versions say Rabbi Yose] says: the androgynus is its own particular creation, and the sages could not decide conclusively whether they were a man or a woman. But this is not so with a tumtum , for sometimes they are a man and sometimes they are a woman.

... Said R’ Yirmiyah ben Elazar: In the hour when the Holy One created the first human, He created him [as] an androgynus, as it is said, “created them male and female.”

Rabbi Ami said: Abraham and Sarah were originally tumtums...